During the dinner, the hosts passed a microphone around the table and asked guests to speak briefly about something that they thought would interest the group.
One of the guests, an influential Chinese professional, talked about the simmering conflict between China and Japan over a group of tiny islands in the Pacific.
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The Chinese professional at dinner last night did not seem so much worried about a military conflict as convinced that one was inevitable. And not because of any strategic value of the islands themselves (they're basically worthless), but because China and Japan increasingly hate each other.
Consumer Manipulation →
One of my worries about our modern market system is that the manipulators have gotten too good. We need better security -- either technical defenses or legal prohibitions -- against this manipulation.
Taiwan To Slash Armed Forces By Up To 20% →
Taiwan has said it plans to slash its armed forces by up to 20 percent from 215,000 over the next five years, in the latest sign of warming ties with former rival China.
Woman Chosen to Lead Central African Republic Out of Mayhem →
Cheers broke out in the National Assembly building here on Monday as representatives chose the mayor of this beleaguered capital to serve as the interim president of the Central African Republic, a country in the grip of a sectarian civil war.
Catherine Samba-Panza, 58, will be the first woman to lead the nation, and she will probably serve for a little over a year, with the goal of leading it to national elections. Her appointment came from an unusual assortment of unelected rebel sympathizers, politicians, artists and others who have filled in as a substitute parliament for a nation so fractured that it has suffered a total breakdown of the state in recent months.
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Ms. Samba-Panza defeated seven other candidates, including the sons of two former presidents and a man whose claim to hold degrees that no other Central Africans possess drew hoots of derision in the assembly chamber on Monday. She was elected in a five-hour process involving two separate hand counts and the double reading-out of all 120-odd members of the assembly.
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Ms. Samba-Panza, an insurance broker who led state-sponsored reconciliation efforts after a previous civil war, was said by supporters to be untainted by the nine-month reign of terror unleashed under the man she replaced, Michel Djotodia.
Syria Peace Talks On the Verge of Imploding After Invitation Mishap →
A last-minute decision by the United Nations to invite -- and then disinvite -- Iran to this week's widely-anticipated Syrian peace conference threatened to unravel the entire diplomatic effort on Monday. The invitation, delivered by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, exposed a rare fault line between Ban and Secretary of State John Kerry, two close allies who have been working together for months.
The diplomatic standoff began Sunday after Ban announced that he had extended a series of last-minute invitations to countries, including Iran, to attend the opening of the talks. "I believe the expanded international presence on that day will be an important and useful show of solidarity in advance of the hard work that the Syrian Government and opposition delegations will begin two days late in Geneva," Ban told reporters in New York.
A very embarrassing about-face.
Ukraine’s Opposition Says Government Stirs Violence →
The government’s opponents said three recent actions had been intended to incite the more radical protesters and sow doubt in the minds of moderates: the passing of laws last week circumscribing the right of public assembly, the blocking of a protest march past the Parliament building on Sunday and the sending of cellphone messages on Tuesday to people standing in the vicinity of the fighting that said, “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” (emphases added)
In Rwanda, a deadly fight among the ruling elite →
The mourners who railed against Patrick Karegeya's killers spoke of them as if they knew exactly who they were.
Officials in Rwandan President Paul Kagame's government carried out the killing, some whispered in private, but none dared say so in public at a requiem in Uganda for the former Rwandan spymaster who was found dead in a Johannesburg hotel earlier this month.
Other former allies of Kagame's government have died suspiciously or been murdered after leaving the country, fueling speculation of retaliation.
Meanwhile Back At The Supreme Court …. Cell Phone Searches →
Under standard Fourth Amendment doctrine, when an individual is arrested his person may be searched incident to that arrest — even though the searching authority did not have a warrant to do so. Traditionally searches incident to arrest are justified as “reasonable” on two interrelated grounds — one of safety (does the arrestee have a gun?) and one of efficacy (we want to inventory his person so that when he is released he may not complain that his money is missing).